Acoustic Analysis of MFCC-Based Palatal Plate for Intraoral Sensors

Although palatal plates have traditionally been used for dental correction, biometric data collection, and speech therapy, there has been a lack of acoustic comparative analysis before and after device placement. To address this gap, this study systematically and objectively compared Korean consonant and vowel recordings made before and after palatal plate insertion. The acoustic characteristics of these recordings were analyzed using Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC), Formant frequencies, and statistical analysis. The results showed that the MFCCs of identical consonants exhibited an average correlation coefficient of 0.804, indicating a relatively high degree of similarity. Differences in formant frequencies between the two conditions were minimal, and statistical analysis using the Wilcoxon rank-sum test revealed no significant differences between the two groups. These findings suggest that the impact of palatal plate use on acoustic properties is limited. This study highlights the potential for objectively assessing speech changes in clinical and rehabilitation settings using such analytical tools.